Don’t mean to continue off topic, but in a way, we really aren’t.
Much has been written of the “dark night of the soul” - that spiritual condition some enter into when we are advancing in prayer and in our spiritual journey.
Great post! I do not know
'Why it is better to believe without seeing?’ I was thinking a few days ago though about the difficult and confusing situation in Israel/Palestine. Surely, the will of God for our country applies even in this instance and God can guide our leaders to choose the greatest good according to his will!!
Yet, as far as I know, he has yet to appear in a blantantly obvious way to President Barack Obama or President Bush. And would we want him to? Is there any human freedom left if one knows God’s perfect will? To whom much has been given, much will be expected".
Are we in between the angels? Most of us might not conform so perfectly to the will of God as an angel? Obeying the will of God can be described as “willing slavery” and has been so described by St. Louis Marie Grignon de Montfort and the apostles. As a result, perhaps it is out of love for us that God allows us some doubt in knowing his will; in some sense we are still free to choose the extent to which and how we do we enter into slavery and maybe the saints who most fully know God’s will as St. Maria Faustina are also the ones who are most fully united with him,
“on the Cross between Heaven and Earth”, as she said of herself, the most enslaved, so they may also be the ones who experience the most happiness from doing the will of God, the ones who truly and genuinely value this willing slavery!!
Maybe if we don’t find the answers we seek here, here is a thought: Going back to the student analogy, say we want to ask Christ theologically profound questions - to practice Mysticism (exploring the Mystery of Christ)… Do we act with as much respect and devotion to God as we would act to our research advisors when pursing a PhD in Electrical Engineering at MIT or Harvard? How would a Noble Prize winning Professor of Physics at MIT react if an interested student, who didn’t go to MIT, started badgering him by email with questions demanding an answer? Now Christ is infinitely more loving than this Professor so perhaps he will be kinder, but given that he
created that Professor as well as physics and is infinitely more deserving of respect than he, how best might we act to seek answers.
Resources on Mysticism:
St. John of the Cross (One of the 33 Doctors of the Church, * Mystic Doctor *)
Ascent of Mount Carmel:
ccel.org/ccel/john_cross/ascent.ii.vii.html
Dark Night of the Soul: (p.s. it may be possible that the movie Dark Knight is a least partially inspired by this work - the themes are almost exactly the same to my limited and imperfect understanding)
ccel.org/ccel/john_cross/dark_night.html
Spiritual Canticle:
karmel.at/ics/john/cn.html
The Living Flame of Love:
karmel.at/ics/john/fl.html
St. Teresa of Avila (his student as well as founder of the Discalced Carmelites, the order of His Holiness Pope John Paul II to the best of my knowledge)
The Life of St. Teresa of Avila:
catholicfirst.com/TheFaith/CatholicClassics/StTeresa/life/teresaofavila.cfm
The Way of Perfection
catholicfirst.com/TheFaith/CatholicClassics/StTeresa/way/wayofperfection.cfm
Interior Castle:
sacred-texts.com/chr/tic/index.htm
St. John of the Cross
"Seek in reading and you will find in meditation, knock in prayer and it will be opened to you in contemplation.
I have not yet read Interior Castle, but perhaps just as we must do well in high school - perhaps take and do well in AP and IB classes - go to the best college possible and do well - perhaps receive an honors in a scientific subject and do undergraduate research - then go to a PhD program and take classes under a Professor that we wish to work under and humbly read his articles to gain mastery of his field, then
perhaps maybe we have the chance of working under him as his dissertation student although it is still up to his
whim despite all the effort in the world, we might do well to pursue God the same way in our search for answers.
The first commandment is “Love the Lord your God with
all your heart, mind, and soul.” Almost all of the time I fail in doing this, placing my own will above that of the Lord’s.
Perhaps learning how to become Interior Castle’s might make us worthy of mysticsm and we may find answers to questions such as these.
Another thought on believing without seeing, perhaps Christ wants us to see
deeper that with human senses. Over the last few months, as I’ve attempted to fully devote myself to Daily Rosary, Divine Mercy Chaplet, Daily Mass, Confession, Spiritual reading and acts of charity, I sometimes have a supernatural sense of things, for example I send an email to someone on my mind who reveals that she has been constantly thinking of me for the last few days, I have a dream about facebook and I open my email and, within the hour of my dream, two religious strangers that I’ve never met are facebooking/adding me for the first time I’ve been added in months. I struggle with the sin of unforgiveness, confess it to my priest, read the book of Jonah from the perspective of the Saints and the Jewish rabbis,
litteralchristianlibrary.wetpaint.com/page/Jonah+Chapter+3
and the next day I read an excerpt from St. Maria Faustina in her Diary
Divine Mercy in My Soul where Christ tells her to focus on the book of Jonah.
A beautiful Christian Song:
Open the Eyes of My Heart youtube.com/watch?v=wutmEjdbedE&feature=related may be a clue to the benefits of believing without seeing.
